According a web survey by insurance company Aviva, 18% of couples split childcare responsibilities evenly, with 6% of men now the primary carer of their child. Pushing the figure from 6,000 in 2000 to 600,000 in 2010. And in a less scientific survey done by myself sat in the window of my front room at 3:30pm, more and more Dads are at the school gates.

To plant the really not-ever-so-Christmassy bonnet on it this year, M&S have taken the 'carol singers at your front door' motif and run with it, re-casting the traditional shower of untalented local school kids (not without some degree of irony, theweemo notes) with this year's X Factor contestants.

One of the great things about the proliferation of TV channels is the ease with which you can avoid watching tiresome adverts. But, it has to be said, there are more than a few ads out at the minute that are quite remarkable. Although, remarkable doesn't always mean good. For instance...

What Bill Hicks said was 'let me tell you something right now, you can print this in stone and don't you ever forget it, any performer who ever sells a product on television is for now and all eternity removed from the artistic world'. Bill Hicks was wrong. There, I said it.